The CEO of Microsoft foresees a "nightmare" future for AI if Google's dominance in search persists

 The CEO of Microsoft foresees a "nightmare" future for AI if Google's dominance in search persists

If Google's dominance in search engine is allowed to continue, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, warned on Monday of a "nightmare" prospect for the internet. This predicament, he added, starts with searches on desktop and mobile but extends to the developing battleground of artificial intelligence.

In the US government's extensive antitrust trial against Google, currently in its fourteenth day, Nadella gave a statement on Monday. He is the most senior IT executive to have testified thus far in the trial that examines the influence of Google as the worldwide standard search engine on mobile devices and browsers.

In his opening remarks, Nadella characterized Google as a technology behemoth that has restricted customer access to competing search engines. He was dressed in a charcoal suit and tie. The long-running competition between Microsoft and Google, which has been a source of friction throughout the trial's weeks-long proceedings, was reflected in his testimony. (A request for comment from Google did not receive a prompt response.)

The partnerships Google has negotiated with businesses like Apple, which have made Google the default search engine for millions of internet users, have been essential to the company's strategy.

Nadella stated, "You wake up in the morning, brush your teeth, and use Google to search."

In his testimony, Nadella said that every year since becoming the CEO of Microsoft, he has tried in vain to convince Apple to stop using Google as its primary search provider. Microsoft has been prepared to shell up close to $15 billion annually for the benefit, said Nadella. (Eddy Cue, a senior Apple official, stated during his testimony last week that Google has always been the company's choice for consumers' top search engine, a point that Google itself has repeated throughout the trial.)

The enormous amount of search data that Google receives through its default agreements, however, is even more concerning, in Nadella's opinion, because it can be used to train Google's AI models to be superior to those of others, posing a threat to give Google an insurmountable advantage in generative AI that would further solidify its power.

With someone having that basic... edge, it will be even more difficult to compete in the age of artificial intelligence, Nadella said.

Microsoft's Bing internet search engine only has a single-digit market share in mobile search as well as just slightly more — into the high teens — in desktop search, despite being profitable and receiving some $100 billion in investment over the past 20 years, according to Nadella. He added that one of his dreams had been to see Bing account for at least 20% from the market in both segments.

Because Google is the default search provider for billions of devices, Google receives vast volumes of data from search queries that help Google understand at scale what people are likely to be interested in, according to Nadella. This is one reason why Bing has failed to increase its market share. And for years, he continued, that "dynamic data" has allowed Google to maintain its lead over Bing.

Every typo you make, such as the name of a nearby restaurant or a new movie, counts toward improving search quality, according to Nadella. Additionally, because the physical world is ever-changing, it is crucial to track changes in search trends in order to maintain a search engine's usefulness when past data loses its usefulness. Nadella formerly oversaw the engineering team in charge of search and advertising at the company and managed Microsoft's cloud computing division before that, so he is familiar with the issues Bing faces.

Currently, Nadella has warned that if huge language models compete on the basis of the data they are trained on, the same data advantage could result in "even more of a nightmare."

He testified, "What concerns me is that it reminds me of what happened with distribution deals [in search]."

When pressed by a Google lawyer, Nadella conceded that defaults aren't always the only factor in success: Google overcame Microsoft's own Internet Explorer defaults on Windows PCs to overtake it as the most popular desktop web browser.

Nadella countered that on more strictly regulated mobile operating systems and in search, default status has a significantly larger impact than in the fight for desktop web browsers, attributing Google's success to the relatively openness of the Windows platform.

AI education

Google has been taking steps to acquire agreements with content producers to ensure that it has exclusive access to their content for AI training reasons for according to the Microsoft CEO, along with to training its models on search queries. Nadella stated that he has recently heard that Google "wants... to write this check and we want you to match it" in meetings with publishers. Concerning those transactions, Google didn't immediately react to queries.

According to the evidence, the requests bring up worries that "what is readily accessible today [may not be] publicly available later" for AI training.

While Google uses "carrots and sticks" to keep users using its products by default, Nadella said Microsoft and Apple go considerably further than other tech companies in this regard. For instance, Apple Maps is the default maps program on iOS devices, while Microsoft has its own settings. He brought up Google's licensing rules, which made installing the Google Play Store app a prerequisite in order to use the Android operating system - another issue at issue in the trial. The comparable, according to Nadella, would be if Microsoft threatened to stop offering Microsoft Office if Bing weren't the default search engine. He said that this would not be in the company's best interests.

Nadella acknowledged that Microsoft's own antitrust disputes with the US government in the 1990s contributed to Google's current dominant position, but he asserted that the current situation with Google is very different. The world's biggest software business opportunity is internet search, especially on mobile devices.

When websites and publishers optimize for Google's search algorithm rather than Bing's, when advertisers flock to Google, and when consumers stick with what's familiar, Nadella claimed, Google's dominance in search is reinforced.

Nadella claimed that in his unsuccessful negotiations with Apple, he has attempted to make the case that Bing's current function is merely that of a tool for Apple to "bid up the price" of hosting Google as the default search provider, but that Bing nonetheless offers a significant counterweight via Google and that Apple should consider investing in the Microsoft alternative for the sake of competition. As a sort of "public utility," Nadella has also suggested operating Bing on Apple devices, according to him.

Nadella stated, "Let's say Bing left the market. "Do you think Google will continue to pay [Apple]?"